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This article examines the decline of the American empire and the possibility of a rapid collapse. It compares the decline of other empires, such as the British and Soviet empires, and highlights the crises that weakened them. The article argues that the United States is currently facing its own crises, including the situations in Ukraine, Gaza, and the Taiwan Straits. It suggests that mishandling these crises, along with domestic political challenges, could signify the decline of American global power. The text specifically focuses on the situation in Ukraine, tracing the history of mismanagement and the current challenges faced by the United States in supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression. It notes that U.S. support for Ukraine is wavering and that cracks have appeared in the anti-Russian coalition, indicating a decline in American global influence. The article also discusses the crises in Gaza and the Taiwan Straits, highlighting the Republican Party's reluctance to support Ukraine and the complexities of the Israeli-Hamas alliance in Gaza. It further mentions the increasing pressure on Taiwan from Beijing and the potential test of the U.S.'s stance on Taiwan's sovereignty. The simultaneous occurrence of these three crises poses a risk to American global hegemony. [Extracted from the article]

JANUARY 18, 2022 Throughout 2021, Americans were absorbed in arguments over mask mandates, school closings, and the meaning of the January 6th attack on the Capitol. In a major strategic miscalculation, Washington admitted Beijing to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, bizarrely confident that a compliant China, home to nearly 20% of humanity and historically the world's most powerful nation, would somehow join the global economy without changing the balance of power. In a power play not seen since Stalin and Mao joined forces in the 1950s, the alliance between Putin's raw military force and Xi's relentless economic pressure may indeed slowly be pulling Europe away from America. [Extracted from the article]

JULY 8, 2021 Fifty years ago, on June 17, 1971, President Richard Nixon stood before the White House press corps, staffers at his side, to announce "a new, all-out offensive" against drug abuse, which he denounced as "America's public enemy number one." By the end of President Clinton's term in 2000, nearly every state in the nation had stiffened its laws on juveniles, setting aside family courts and sending young, mainly minority, offenders directly to adult prisons for long sentences. Standing alongside the president on that day when America's drug war officially began was John Erlichman, White House counsel and Nixon confidante. As of 2019, this country's prisons remained overcrowded with 430,900 people convicted of drug crimes, while drug offenders represented 46% of all those in federal penitentiaries. [Extracted from the article]

As the countryside slipped out of its control and Taliban guerrillas multiplied after 2004, Washington tried everything - a trillion-dollar aid program, a 100,000 troop "surge", a multi-billion-dollar drug war - but none of it worked. Once the full costs of Washington's withdrawal from Afghanistan become apparent, the debacle may, not surprisingly, discourage potential future allies from trusting Washington's word or judgment. While the U.S. bombing campaign raged through October 2001, the CIA shipped$70 million in bundled bills into Afghanistan to mobilize its old coalition of tribal warlords for the fight against the Taliban. Almost immediately, Washington announced suspension of its military aid to Pakistan until Islamabad took "decisive action" against the Taliban and its militant allies. [Extracted from the article]

Sure, China might be surpassing this country in multiple economic metrics and building up its military power, said Ryan Hass, the former China director in Obama's National Security Council, but it is not 10 feet tall. Similarly, Trump's State Department warned that Beijing harbored "hegemonic ambitions" aimed at "displacing the United States as the world's foremost power." Although China was clearly trying "to establish itself as the world's leading power", he added, America "still has the ability to more than hold its own in that competition", just as long as it avoids Trump's "trajectory of self-sabotage." "Across the ideological spectrum, we in the U.S. foreign policy community", two senior Obama officials would later write, "shared the underlying belief that U.S. power and hegemony could readily mold China to the United States' liking All sides of the policy debate erred.". [Extracted from the article]

JANUARY 28, 2021 After four years of Donald Trump's fitful tenure, America is awakening from a long, troubled sleep to discover, like the fictional character Rip Van Winkle, that the world it once knew has changed beyond all recognition. While his White House seemed obsessed with gaming its bilateral ties with China, Beijing was stealing a page right out of Obama's strategic global playbook, outmaneuvering Washington by pursuing two multilateral trade agreements that should have seemed eerily familiar to anyone who lived through the Obama years. [Extracted from the article]